The new backend should greatly improve GPU rendering performance on current Macs, Apple having deprecated open standards OpenGL and OpenCL in favour of its own Metal API in macOS 10.14. However, just as significant is the Blender Foundation’s announcement that Apple will “provide engineering expertise and additional resources to the Blender HQ and development community”.Īpple’s corporate sponsorship was announced alongside the first public showing of that development work: the initial commit for a new Metal backend for Cycles, Blender’s production renderer. Īpple engineers now developing new Metal backend for Blender’s Cycles renderer In 2020, the fund passed the Blender Foundation’s original target figure, intended to pay for the salaries of 20 full-time Blender developers, and has continued to grow steadily ever since.įirst official patch submitted by Apple: Metal backend for Cycles GPU rendering on macOS. Its sponsorship – which represents a donation of at least €120,000/year – brings the total income from the fund to over €140,000/month (around $160,000/month). Patron-level sponsorship means a donation of at least €120,000/year to fund Blender development.Īpple is also working on native Metal support for Cycles, Blender’s production renderer, which should greatly improve GPU rendering performance on current Macs, with a full release scheduled for Blender 3.1.Īpple becomes Blender’s latest Corporate PatronĪs the latest Corporate Patron of the Blender Development Fund, Apple joins a growing list of major technology companies, including AMD, Amazon Web Services, Epic Games, Facebook, Nvidia and Unity. Apple has become the latest tech firm to back open-source 3D tool Blender, joining AMD, Epic Games, Nvidia and Unity as a patron of the Blender Development Fund.

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